'Ardent Sentry' Drill Held Each Year For Storm Preparadness

Members of Civil Air Patrol’s Texas and Louisiana wings will participate May 2-9 in a training scenario involving a hurricane striking Texas from the Gulf of Mexico – one stage of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command's Ardent Sentry 12 homeland security and disaster response exercise.

In the Texas-based scenario, the hurricane first makes landfall near Brownsville, blows back out to the Gulf and then hits the upper Texas coast, wreaking major damage to infrastructure.

The area command post will be staffed by members from National Headquarters, Southwest Region and Texas Wing staff in Denton. Incident command posts will operate in Houston and San Antonio and in Alexandria, LA.

Elsewhere, Ardent Sentry 12 will include field training events in Alaska, Connecticut, North Dakota, Oregon and Nova Scotia, Canada, involving U.S. and Canadian military units and responses to such simulated disasters as a nuclear weapons incident at an Air Force base and an air crash in a remote area, as well as other weather-related calamities.

Ardent Sentry is held annually to sharpen the readiness skills of local, state and national organizations in responding to national-level emergencies, including natural disasters and terrorism incidents.

CAP, the U.S. Air Force auxiliary, regularly takes part in Ardent Sentry and other homeland security and disaster response exercises across the nation, assisting local, state and national organizations with crisis and terrorism preparedness. Most recently, CAP participated March 28-29 in Operation Falcon Virgo, an airborne intercept mission conducted over Washington, D.C., to test the Air Force's threat-intercept procedures.

FMI: www.gocivilairpatrol.com